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Some Rolling Stones songs announce themselves with a riff you can’t escape. Thru and Thru takes the opposite route, quietly drawing you in before suddenly becoming something far bigger. Keith Richards turns a late-night burst of inspiration in Barbados into one of the most intriguing moments on Voodoo Lounge, and the story gets even stranger once Charlie Watts enters the picture—quite literally via a concrete stairwell. What begins as a vulnerable, almost dreamlike piece gradually mutates into a thunderous, richly layered performance. The Rolling Stones were hardly expected to reinvent themselves in 1994, but apparently nobody told them that. Thru and Thru remains proof.
Well I’m in the yellow pages/ You just take a look/ Look me up under services/ You know it’s just an open book…
Written by: Jagger/Richards Recorded: Blue Wave Studios, Barbados, St. Philip, Barbados, West Indies, Apr. 30- mid May 1993; Windmill Lane Rexcording, Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 3-Dec. 11 1993; Chomsky’s Ranch (Don Was’ Studio) and A&M Studios, Los Angeles, Jan. 15-Apr. 23 1994
Keith Richards: vocals, guitar, piano Mick Jagger: backing vocals Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Darryl Jones (bass), Pierre de Beauport (acoustic guitar), Ivan Neville and Bernard Fowler (backing vocals)
More about Thru and Thru by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
Inspiration In Barbados
Keith Richards found Thru and Thru in the strange, almost cinematic hours of a night in Barbados. He was there with Mick Jagger and Pierre de Beauport working at Eddy Grant’s Blue Wave studios, which served as both their creative base and living space. After spending the night at a club in Bridgetown, the group returned around five in the morning. Richards remembers getting out of the car, beginning to stagger toward the studio, and suddenly turning back to Pierre with a clear message to “Switch the stuff on”. Whatever had been forming in his head during the drive arrived all at once. He went inside and recorded the song in a single take. The setting seems to have seeped directly into the music: a tropical, star-filled night transformed into a brooding meditation on loneliness, betrayal, and the shock of discovering that someone you love has moved on.
A Voice Full of Doubt
Although the song’s lyrics are comparatively straightforward, Richards gives them an emotional depth that makes them feel far more complicated. The narrator appears to be waiting for a loved one to call, only to discover through the news that something has changed irrevocably. The realization produces anger as much as sadness, leaving the character suspended between disbelief and resignation. Richards’ delivery is crucial here. His naturally weathered voice becomes unusually vulnerable, revealing hesitation, disappointment, and quiet devastation rather than simply pushing the words forward. That fragile quality gives Thru and Thru much of its character, turning a relatively simple narrative into something psychologically darker.
A Broader Musical Landscape
Thru and Thru stands among the most ambitious pieces on Voodoo Lounge, largely because its musical language refuses to settle comfortably into one category. It moves through rock, blues, and folk, with Richards most probably using one of his Telecasters to shape the song’s distinctive guitar texture. His playing is expressive without becoming showy, allowing individual notes to carry much of the emotional weight. The arrangement is divided into two contrasting worlds. The opening section has an almost dreamlike character, enhanced by reverse reverb and crystalline synthesizer pads. Later the track suddenly expands into a much harder rock passage.
Charlie Watts Changes the Atmosphere
That transformation owes much to Charlie Watts, whose drums give the second section an entirely different physical presence. His part was recorded in the stairwell of the studio, a concrete space whose natural echo created an unusually powerful sound. Don Was later confirmed that the location had tremendous reverberation. Around Watts’ performance Darryl Jones supplies strong bass while Pierre de Beauport adds acoustic guitar. Mick Jagger, Ivan Neville and Bernard Fowler contribute backing vocals, broadening the arrangement without taking attention away from Richards’ central performance.
Charlie Watts (1994): “The monster drum sound is the stairwell. It’s on four or five songs on the album – You Got Me Rocking… It was a 4-flight stairwell, and I started off at the top, which is Moon Is Up, and I ended up at the bottom playing You Got Me Rocking and Thru and Thru… The studio’s at the top. It’s like going down, then? So it’s open all the way down. So we started off out by the door there, and then Don Smith said, ‘Would you go to the bottom and try it?’ It was a bit small down there, but it was all right. The problem is you can’t hear anything down there except drums. Such tremendous sound.”
The Final Shape of the Track
The closing moments further distinguish Thru and Thru from a conventional ballad. A carefully constructed sound collage appears in the coda, giving the track an atmospheric conclusion after its dramatic rock section. Together, the performances and production make it one of the defining tracks on Voodoo Lounge. There is also a small technical curiosity concerning its running time. The CD lists the song at 6:15, although the actual music finishes at 5:59, followed by sixteen seconds of silence. The discrepancy was probably connected to the CD edition’s inclusion of Mean Disposition, a song that was not included on the LP.
Keith Richards (1994): “Thru and Thru is one I wrote all by myself… I was pissed out of my brain when I wrote that! (laughs) This is the weirdest thing, the circumstances. We were in Barbados early last year, writing songs, Mick and I. Charlie was there, and also Pierre de Beauport, my guitar man, who’s also on Thru and Thru – he’s the guitar at the end. And we’d been out to a club in Bridgetown. Tropical night. We had a night off, you know. And we get back to Eddy Grant’s studio, which is where we were living and working, at 5 in the morning and get out of the car. And I start staggering in, and suddenly I turn around to Pierre. I said, ‘Switch the stuff on, man. Incoming, incoming’. I guess maybe in the car… But I just went into the studio and laid it all down in one take. There it was. I don’t know if it was just in the car, but suddenly it came. And that’s really, to me, what songwriting is. I have very little do with it, it comes on the wave.”
Keith Richards (2003): “On an album like Voodoo Lounge there are songs that people won’t get for 10 years… and then suddenly they realise what I’ve been doing. Thru and Thru was exactly like that. It took off when it was put on the soundtrack of The Sopranos… Suddenly everybody was saying ‘What’s that wonderful record?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, it’s the last track on Voodoo Lounge.'”
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